Please use this thread for comments about the BBC’s current programming and activities. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog – scroll down for new topic-specific posts. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or chit-chat. Thoughtful comments are encouraged. Comments may be moderated.
Sue:
“Are headbangers who comment on this site just making matters worse, and should they shut up about Islam? See Honest Reporting thread below.”
The “headbangers” post was one of JR’s more honest ones. It is a de-facto admission that there is a conscious bias at the BBC against Israel in order to appease Islamists.
Here is how his “logical reasoning” goes:
First he says that there is a grave danger from 1% of radicalized Muslims (some odd 11 million people) growing into 3% (33 million). Then he says that some of his probably imaginary “friends” in the UK government agree (Alastair Crooke maybe?).
JR then urges “headbangers” to stop posting on this board urging BBC to drop its pro-Islamist line.
Because, he says, it will only lead to further radicalization of Muslims
(as if Waziristan madrassas have B-BBC and BBC on their curriculum, instead of screeds by OBL and the Muslim Brotherhood).
Then by contradicting himself JR says that the danger is not that high, and that Israel’s supporters exaggerate it so Israel can continue to get its money from the US. Because with the end of the Cold War, Israel is of no use to the US (as if, all of a sudden, US 6th fleet has a better spot in the region to park than in Haifa! Beirut, or Gaza City maybe – ha JR? US admirals don’t seem to agree, with the possible exception of your friend “Zbig”)
He also accuses posters on this board of being some kind of Israeli government PR operation.
Getting paranoid JR?
Finally, JR which one is it: Either Islamism is a mortal danger, hence your urging everyone to follow the BBC appeasement line, or Israel is exaggerating the threat to get the money?
As a case in point, I want to refresh your memory about a discussion the two of us had a week or two ago on this board: You said that BBC didn’t want to sound warnings about
Abdul Rahman Ibn Abdul Aziz as-Sudais an-Najdi and other radical clerics in UK mosques, because the information was coming from a “dubious” source, i.e. MEMRI. Even though it was black on white – or rather green on white.
That was 1 year before 7/7. It could have possibly saved dozens of British lives.
According to you, BBC’s excuse for not sounding warnings to moderate Muslims about indoctrination in UK Mosques, was that the information was coming from a biased Zionist source that couldn’t possibly be reliable. (even though Abdul Rahman’s sermons were broadcast on Saudi TV, and were even translated to English on an Islamist site as far back as 2002).
Admit it, the fact that you were rejecting anything that was coming from MEMRI, is probably all those articles you’ve read on Guardian pages from a parade of closet Islamists. The Islamists that were all of a sudden feeling exposed and not protected by the language barrier (constantly stating one thing in Arabic or Urdu and the opposite in English).
JR, how delusional can you get? More importantly how illogical can you get!?
Hannah M – But hasn’t a decline in viewing share affected all the ‘terrestrial’ channels due to the growth of multichannel TV?
As you have the stats – and to put your figures for the Beeb in context -could you please calculate the % decline in BBC1’s audience share since 1998 and compare it to what has happened to ITV1’s viewing share over the same period?
Thanks.
Jonathan Ross tonight: interview with Sir David Attenborough. A relatively amusing bit of banter is going on about Sir David’s career, when out of the blue JR asks DA about climate change. DA is given a few seconds to explain that over the years he’s come to accept that climate change is happening and caused by humans. Then on we go with the banter… a bizarre interlude indeed. Anyone would have thought JR was asked to plant it.
Just watched Newsnight
– the Dear Leader and his BBC accolytes surrounded by red flags in the Great Hall of the People.
They all looked very much at home.
Then their overview of the global economic situation. Basically America is on the skids but Gordon will be able to pull us through with a bit of help from the Chinese.
And then the two star interviews:- lefty journo, failed editor and self styled economist Will Hutton (again) and mirabile dictum a Republican US Senator.
Which Reublican Senator?
Chuck Hegel of course – the only one who really hates George Bush.
Economics & politics for 16 year old young socialists circa 1965.
Robert Peston, BBC business editor, has been mentioned here before as a typical fair and balanced BBC kind of guy. Son of a Labour peer and author of “Brown’s Britian”, in which (as per the Observer): “Peston is partisan. He is a Brownite and Brown’s Britain does not disguise it.” On his blog he has recently laid the blame of Northern Rock at the door of Mervin King rather than Brown’s reforms and Darling’s dithering. Today he has really outdone himself when talking about bankers bonuses:
“My old friend Hugo Dixon, the founder and chairman of Breaking Views, puts it rather brilliantly: “Marxism is a bankrupt philosophy. But its critique of capitalism – that profits are privatised but risks are socialised – always had an element of truth.”
Determining the truth behind Marxism may be the sort of thing BBC employees spend time on, but look at the case Robert is talking about. The providers of capital (the capitalists) are the shareholders and bondholders of the bank, all of whom have see these billion dollar losses (the risk). The bankers receiving the bonuses are actually employed by the evil capitalists – that’s right – this makes them the proletarians taking the surplus profit!
Meanwhile I wait in vain for an explanation from “John Reith”, David Gregory or any other Beeboid about the blatent abuse of the television tax to fund an environmental campaign to “save the Earth” and to ignore, no deliberately thumb its nose at, the BBC Trust which specifically said that it was not the BBC’s purpose to do so.
Any answers “John Reith”? Any answers David Gregory?
BBC Responds – MPACUK Success!!
It pays to contact the BBC.
“To avoid confusing the cultural practice of arranged marriage with her family’s religious status the team in the Newsroom agree that it would have been better if they had referred to her Bangladeshi background as opposed to her Muslim background.”
http://www.mpacuk.org/content/view/4325/34/
Obviously, not all their supporters are happy …
K. Urban:
“The BBC should be emailed back by MPAC and barraged by people to say that we want a higher profile apology, the wording of which should be quickly agreed with MPAC
We also want an assurance from the BBC that there will be no similar repeat of the matter on a future news story.”
Imran:
“This nothing we need to ask for on air apology we need to go one step further !
i am not downplay this success but if it was a jewish girl then their would have been SCREAM , pulling their hair out until they got a on air apology “
Andy Marr has better taste in woman than I thought.
http://www.order-order.com/2008/01/story-you-wont-get-from-bbc-guardian-or.html
Is this from the BBC?
Alan,
Read all that again,does “John Reith” sound like BBC or a shill with an agenda?
This “so called” John Reith has gone from batting for the BBC to batting for???
That’s the first allegation of bias on this blog that bally well stands up.
Er….hang on a minute…. what exactly has that got to do with bias?
John Reith | 18.01.08 – 7:06 pm | #
Balen Repot! Reith Balen Report. Where is it?
Auntie teaching our kids politics?
Here it comes.
The windmill powered,great british caliphate of euristan.
OI! TEACHER LEAVE THOSE KIDS ALONE!
Alan,
Your post to Sue at 18.01.08 10:57 p.m. was excellent. It merits a response from Mr. Reith.
Mick,
As you probably know, the BBC almost never makes corrections like that for complaints about its news treatment of Israel or Jews. It took outright admonishment from the Israeli government to get them to grudgingly admit bias in the Orla Guerin/Arafat episode.
The lefty Guardian style bias of the BBC’s London news dept and its associated foreign correspondents doesn’t worry me that much. If anything it is amusing to see their pomposity and arrogance, and they do at least provide the basic facts. I can always ignore their cherished ‘analysis’. OK, I shouldn’t have to pay for their self-indulgent output, but most of my BBC cash goes on providing the vast torrent of complete rubbish that the
BBC pours out each and every day on all its TV channels and nearly all it radio ones, and is of no use to me whatsoever.
Pete: So you’d be much happier with ITV’s quality, envelope-pushing televisual output and the astonishingly superb breadth and variety of musical, factual and comedy output that the nation’s commercial radio stations offer us, then?
Me too. I think Virgin Radio’s documentaries and satirical comedy half-hours stack up against anything the BBC can offer!
not the most contemporary anecdote, but one that many among you will find amusing. Apparently from 1933 to the outbreak of WW 2, Churchill was banned from speaking on Das BBC because his position on Germany was too controversial (Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, 2002 edition p 19). Good old auntie- drawing moral equivalence between murderous, despotic ideologies and western democracy even back then.
Half the comments are not about BBC bias but about the world’s first professional troll, Reith.
Any chance people can just ignore this tedious clown and get back to the point of the blog.
I think it would be fair to say that one of the most popular shows on the Beeb is EastEnders, and certainly one they put a lot of effort into. Have done for years.
Interesting however that this particular programme is almost wall to wall unpleasantness, with characters in it often telling lies to other and if they don’t, having no trouble distorting the truth.
Perhaps then EasteEnders is the one offering that sums up the ethos of the Beeb: we lie, we distort and we sure don’t like you muppets out there. So when we speak to you it is in a shrill scream of derision.
Thanks beeb for letting me pay for this.
Some parts of the news are just not worth reporting.
I wonder why the BBC are not going with this story? I suppose that it is not very important.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article3213148.ece
dave: Surely not true, otherwise why would panellists on BBC “topical news” comedy programmes only mention the Daily Mail when it comes to being anti-war?
BBC people:
Go here to look at pretty pictures which show how much things have improved thanks to the surge in the main, and the Iraqis slowly getting their act together. A 90% decline in inter neighbourhood strife in Baghdad alone! Hope that all 18 provinces will be controlled by the Iraqi Forces by mid year.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives2/2008/01/019573.php
Look at the pretty pictures (which BBC people can’t see because they is so blind you know…) and tell me that things are not getting better….
Watch for Beeboids to start claiming that in fact it is green men from Mars that are the real reason for the fall in violence, anything but the surge and the Iraqis taking responsibility for their own country and talking to each other rather than trying to kill!
Alan 18.01.08- 10.57pm
I agree with what you say.
Simon 19.01.08 4.21 am
Thanks, both, for your comments.
I don’t like getting sidetracked into wrangling over subtle nuances or semantics that ‘John Reith’ is so keen on wriggling out of. When I wrote the general comment that prompted the headbanger reply I expected John Reith to ignore it.
But his reply was startling. A threat – “back off, you don’t know what you’re getting into” often used as a last resort by people who haven’t a leg to stand on.
What everyone here who is hurt by the BBC’s defamatory bias against Israel is trying to do is to penetrate the impenetrable, and persuade the BBC, even in the guise of ‘John Reith’, to recognise their bias, and change. So far all efforts have fallen on stony ground. Water off a duck’s back.
A commenter on another site mentions the current movement towards the suppression of any criticism of Islam, citing the treatment in Canada of Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn. We know several reasons why our NuLab government might be motivated to become part of this movement, fear, votes, stupidity, bribery, corruption, wha’ever, but is the Beeb knowingly and deliberately colluding, and if so why?
‘Appeasement’ is an unattractive thing that no-one would be proud of indulging in, but I can see that in certain circumstances it might have some extenuating justification. But if we really are all the hostages of a global Muslim hijack, one we have permitted ourselves to be outwitted by, then I despair.
What to do? The Pandora’s box has already been opened, Mr. Reith. You can’t close it by telling everyone not to mention it.
I don’t want to be part of that and I don’t think license payers or anyone else should be subjected to its influence or propaganda.
Our local butcher complained about the Jamie Oliver effect. “All those T.V. chefs have to do is open their mouths and everyone wants this or doesn’t want that.” “They are inadvertently threatening our livelihoods.”
Unintended consequences of course. But it brought home just how much power television wields, and the breadth of the consequences that ensue when it is irresponsibly abused.
You won’t satisfy Islam by throwing Israel to the lions. They’ll still be hungry. And, Mr. Reith, don’t forget the 1930s.
Bluebirds Over | 19.01.08 – 12:56 pm | #
God only knows what influence Eastenders has had on our lovely society.
If anyone must watch a soap the new ITV one is entertaining. But watch out for the soap within the soap. I see lying and unpleasantness on the horizon. Oh well.
Sue:
You won’t satisfy Islam by throwing Israel to the lions. They’ll still be hungry. And, Mr. Reith, don’t forget the 1930s.
——————————————–
Too true. I’ve argued for years that Islam hates Israel because of the West and not the other way round. If Israel disappeared overnight nothing would change…
I wonder if those types at the Beeb who are sympathetic to Islamist ideology realise this and that long-term, they are slowly making a noose for their own necks?
Re above.
Or. The BBC could nick the idea and precede Eastenders with an amusing soap about the people who create it.
Or, better still, they could make it reality T.V., featuring the real creators so we can see what whacky characters they all are. Then we could all be like them. Yeah
“A commenter on another site mentions the current movement towards the suppression of any criticism of Islam, citing the treatment in Canada of Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn. We know several reasons why our NuLab government might be motivated to become part of this movement, fear, votes, stupidity, bribery, corruption, wha’ever, but is the Beeb knowingly and deliberately colluding, and if so why?”
The left has given up on the proletariat as the stormtroopers of the socialist revolution.To paraphrase Aneurin Bevan,”The buggers won’t fight”. Now the left have found a new weapon to destroy capitalism,militant Islam.
Why is the BBC colluding? Because its ranks are recruited from the left and the BBC is the epitome of a socialist,jobs for life,non-competitive enterprise,unsullied by the need to earn money.Marxism made real.
Don’t judge the BBC solely by what it does,examine what it is,there are no surprises then.
Here’s an edifying story summing up the nature of Islam perfectly. The BBC must have typed this up thru gritted teeth – but at least they managed to depersonalise the horror somewhat by calling them “Israel body parts” Not “Israeli” or “Isreali soldiers'”, but “Israel”. Nice, that – thanks, BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7197679.stm
bob
Reith must be squirming a little over this one. Are these “Israel body parts” the result of direct or indirect fire? Maybe the result of a “clash”.
We badly need context from Jeremy Bowen, to show us how Israel only has itself to blame for this.
I mean, surely the Beeboid mindset must be able to come up with some religio-cultural excuse for “The party of Allah” to be doing this. Or maybe it’s a new ploy by “The party of Allah” – land for pieces.
“You won’t ever win an argument with him because he’s not interested in informed debate. John Reith has his belief set and he’s not going to change.”
Who does this description remind you of? What about 99% of the posters on this site. Read from the top down and tell me the poeple here are not completely bonkers? Informed debate is pointless. JR has proven that.
He posts facts and reaoned argument, not his belief set. You can’t say the same.
I genuinely believe you should all seek help.
Heffer in the Telegraph today:
“How can Mark Thompson, the director-general of the BBC, keep a straight face when he says he wants to hear more regional accents on the airwaves? On Radio 4, you hear almost nothing but them: mainly Scots, naturally reflecting who are the true masters in our country today, but also a smattering of Geordies, and from time to time a genial chap who sounds so much like an impersonation of Paul Robeson that you are convinced he is about to burst into a verse or two of Old Man River. I wouldn’t mind if they could do subtitles on the wireless. Too true we need more regional accents on the BBC: and the region I have in mind is called Kensington and Chelsea.”
Watch it Simon, Befordshire constabulary will be after you.
Joel
Most of us have tried engaging with the BBC directly – it is such a frustrating experience that we usually give up. Most of us here are not bonkers – try CiF comments for that.
Joe B,
Reith isn’t an individual troll, its a collective beeboid response unit. Unfortunately they are only programmed to spot any technical errors in posts and highlight those, thus in their eyes, nulifying the post.
They rarely make an attempt to defend the indefensible, the beeboid leftist, state funded mindset, because in the words of their former Business Editor, ” its not a conspiracy, its visceral. They think they are on the middle ground”.
When Jon Miller, the former ST collumist had his spat with them two years or so ago, an interesting figure came out on the number of lawyers that the bbc had working on the case. It was a lot – but hey, when its not your money , who cares !
The beeboid pro-islamic agenda, other than the fact that none of them have to live in the middle of Leicester, is slightly odd. Having spent several decades living ‘East of Suez’ , I’m fairly confident that the average beeboid would be horified by the reality of islamic life.
Joel the student who knows it all who says of Reith:
“He posts facts and reaoned argument, not his belief set. You can’t say the same.
I genuinely believe you should all seek help.”
Thus speaks a so called intelligent human being who obviously believes the BBC and cannot see because he is morally blind as well..Reith does NOT produce “reaoned” argument but ignores the reasoned arguments put before him for the little cherry pick here and there. He has not answered a single major question put before him about BBC bias or unbalanced reporting.
And you say WE need help? Most of us are fine upstanding citizens who believe in a fair and just society without a BBC and NOT the socialist utopias that that failed time and time again throughout history and which the BBC still loves…. can you honestly sit there with a straight face and agree with the BBC that Israel is bad, Palestinians are good, Cuba is paradise on Earth and capitalism (which pays their vastly undeserved wages) is also bad?
Get a life and do some research. Many of us have BEEN to these places and know of what we speak – unlike Reith and his groupies such as you.
“I genuinely believe you should all seek help.”
Yes, those that disagree with BBC output are mentally defective and must be cured.
Talk about scoring an own goal.
It’s brainwashed sanctimonious idiots like Joel who need to seek help, if he seriously believes EVERYONE here is mentally defective because they don’t think his way. Which is no doubt the BBC way.
I have just had the misfortune to listen to the News quiz on Radio 4. Jeremy Hardy, flag waving apologist for Leninism, not only gave a ‘humorous’ lecture on Hegelian dialectic, but then wrote off all Australians as genocidal murderers who ‘stole’ their country. Come on BBC, I know it is supposed to be comedy, but the offensive stereotyping of “toffs” (all wear Elizabethan costume at public school)who “hate their children” and the broad brush approach to Australians wouldn’t be countenanced if he were discussing Nigerians(you starved the Biafrans to death to get control of the oil ho ho ho)
It seems to me that there are very few people indeed who hold similar extremist views to Hardy (he defined the Royal Family as parasites on Just a Minute)Why are his odious hard left diatribe’s repeated so often? Who does he ‘represent’ and why am I taxed to pay for some one who I detest?
Auntie Beeb knows best – and there is no room for poking fun at the dereliction and social collapse created by socialism
The BBC – keeping useless Marxists in a comfy lifestyle
Has anybody heard Justin Webb on Feedback talking about the American elections ?
He came up with a long list of candidates with unacceptable (to him)views. No prizes for guessing which party he was talking about !
It’s odd that an interesting story on Today this morning (8.30 – 8.40) involving claims that our Red Ken was using public funds so Lee Jasper could organise a campaign against Trevor Phillips’ appointment as chair of the new race/equlity quango (whatever it is called) has not yet managed to find its way onto the BBC News website. The Today programme website describes it as a “top story” and, having listened to it – it’s still on “listen again” – I’d agree – after all, it’s Ken’s re-election year!
The BBC and how it castigates the UK on its lack of military knowledge.
French make serious move into Gulf
President Nicolas Sarkozy has gone beyond France’s traditional policy of selling arms to Gulf states by signing a deal with Abu Dhabi for a permanent French naval base. This projects France into the complex politics of the Gulf, identifying it even more closely with Gulf Arab countries which have expressed concern about the future policies of Iran.
………….
France has traditionally had a close relationship with Abu Dhabi. It has sold Mirage jet fighters and AMX-30 tanks to the Emirate and has had a defence agreement with it (mainly dealing with the support of arms contracts) since 1995. This French success in Abu Dhabi (and Qatar) has for years irritated the British, who regarded themselves as the mentors of the rulers of the lower Gulf. The British formed them into the Trucial States before leaving the Gulf in 1971.
…………..
According to British sources, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the ruler of Abu Dhabi, has never got on well with the British for reasons British diplomats do not fully understand. However, his antipathy appears well-established. This allowed the French to make the running and they have done so.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7189481.stm
The BBC paints this image that France is the sole armourer for the UAE. Crap the UAE is alone out of the Arab states in buying its weapons from many sources rather than relying on one sole supplier. Since 1995 France has sold the UAE 62 Mirage 2000-5 jets .But at the same time they also bought 80 F16-E from the US. Oh and BBC those AMX-30 tanks it sold 64 of them in 1978, since then they have sold 390 Leclerc tanks to the UAE. In fact the tanks in the UAE service are more capable than the French ones. But what about its IFV? Well for them they went to Russia and bought 402 BMP3 but they also purchased 90 BTR-U from the Ukraine. 28 RG-31 Nyala from South Africa , or 136 APCs from turkey. How about 87 SPGs from Holland. 10 Pumas from Romania, 20 Chinooks from Libya. They even bought 30 AH64-D (apache) Gunships from the Yanks.
This image that the BBC presents that the Brits are pissed off with France for being the sole weapons supplier is tosh. Everyman and his dogs sells to the UAE.
OH and the troops for the new base, they are getting relocated from Djibouti Have a look on the map just where that is in relation to the UAE.
The BBC and how it castigates the UK on its lack of military knowledge.
“Read from the top down and tell me the poeple here are not completely bonkers? Informed debate is pointless. JR has proven that.”
Yesth Masthter.You are a real sycophant Igor.
He posts facts and reaoned argument, not his belief set. You can’t say the same.
I genuinely believe you should all seek help.
Joel | Homepage | 19.01.08 – 3:21 pm | #
Joel
I’ve never seen a reasoned argument from Team JR.
They’re pretty good at refuting arguments by digging up contradictions though – often with a bit of literary syle and humour.
You, on the other hand, seem to have neither argument, style nor humour.
All you contribute is the odd childish insult.
Is one of the JR’s your daddy?
Well here is another story that everyone in the Westminster media knows yet
won’t publish.
It involves three household names; JACKIE ASHLEY, the Guardian’s
cheerleader-in-chief for the Brownies, ALICE MILES of The Times, who cheers
for the Cameroons and ANDY MARR, Gordon Brown’s much favoured BBC
interlocutor.
Yet ANDY MARR fathering a child with ALICE MILES whilst married to JACKIE
ASHLEY goes unreported.
PM’s dig at BBC’s £18m deal for Ross
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=509286&in_page_id=1770
Anon: Believe you me if the public were made aware of what really goes on at Westminster, it would make your eyes water.
The media kept Charles Kennedy’s drinking problems secret for a long time, yet people could have potentially voted the man into power.
There are some amazing rumours that have been going around for years about some very senior and well known politicians that if true would be an utter scandal.
The problem is our media keep it quiet for two main reasons.
1. They want to be seen as “trustworthy” by the politicians, otherwise the politicians won’t speak to them.
2. Many of the media types are just as sleazy as the politicians and just like to keep it all quiet.
Martin | 20.01.08 – 12:29 am |
indeed
can you imagine marr challenging any mp on such ‘sexual misconduct’ as his, even if it were dond “during working hours” and on government property?
i suspect there’d be a couple of winks exchanged and another topic quickly found
Martin | 20.01.08 – 12:29 am |
i think it’s ungrammatical too, or very close to being so
“israeli” would be unquestionably grammatical and much less inelegant, too
if it’s not corrected in due course, i think we can conclude definitively that there is an agenda at work, and it’s not accuracy – grammatical or otherwise – in reporting
“Labour says crime is down compared to the Tories’ time in power in the 1990s.”
THAT’S CONSERVATIVES YOU BBC ARSE BISCUITS.
I can’t say I was thrilled when some wretched gremlin switched my radio on at 6am on a Sunday morning. But I’m glad it did; I wouldn’t have believed one of the reports I heard on this morning’s BBC news bulletin even if I’d read about it on these illustrious pages.
The BBC informed us that somewhere in the world exactly 614 candidates would stand for exactly 614 seats, including the country’s dictator (sorry that should have been ‘ailing president’) whose possible reelection as president would be confirmed after the vote. That’s right folks, one seat, one candidate! With pride in her voice, our announcer told us that young people had been encouraged to stand, so over half of the candidates were under 50! Wow. Don’tchya just wish WE could have elections like that?
Now call me cynical, but I would have expected the world’s ‘most respected’ broadcaster (well that’s what you keep telling us, JR) to have conveyed just a pinch of concern, of disapproval perhaps, about an election which so clearly isn’t, one redolent of old style Stalinism. After all, the BBC has reported in depth on shortcomings in the running of elections in Kenya, Ukraine, Russia, and even the United States. So committed is Auntie to the principle of democratic elections that she even ran a series of interviews and news slots last year promoting engagement with a terrorist organisation which enshrines the destruction of a member state of the UN in its constitution – on the grounds that it had been democratically elected.
But no. Not a jot, not a tittle, not a nuance of cynicism about this parody of an election. Elections in countries in their first half century of democratic rule regularly get minute coverage from the BBC, exposing all they can about misconduct and Ugandan practices in elections. Fair enough.
So why didn’t this election get the same treatment? Why, because the country is Cuba, and the dictator is that fave of the aging left wing trendies who edit the news – you know, the ones who went on demos in the 70s and still have their ‘Che’ T shirts up in the attic – who still think fondly of brave Fidel standing out against those dastardly Americans!
I began to wonder what these editors would do once the FOD dies. I needn’t have worried. They’ve got Hugo Chavez to drool over now, haven’t they.
Left wing editing of the most blatant sort in THIS news bulletin!
“Well here is another story that everyone in the Westminster media knows yet won’t publish…”
because it’s subject to an injunction.
You be unimpressed with Marr or whoever sought it or the judge who granted it, but to expect mainstream journalists to ignore it is a bit much.
Here’s a link (if you can stomach it) to the Ron Paul forum ( http://www.ronpaulforum.com/showthread.php?t=302154 )which, in its unabashed and virulent anti-Semitism, seems to be the inspiration for the “Protocols ‘ strain of anti-semitic writing” to which John Reith was referring in his presentation of one of the “interpretations making the rounds” (Dec. 12, 2007, 1:21 p.m.) regarding the origins of the Balfour declaration, the implication being this interpretation were just as valid as any other. Reith stated: “You write: Lloyd George had Zionist sympathies, having worked with and on behalf of Zionists prior to his rise to power. He would also have contemplated a Jewish state with similar boundaries. It seems to me that you are implying that the Balfour Declaration was issued freely, even enthusiastically, and basically was a recognition of the merits of the Zionist case. You are doubtless aware that there are a number of other interpretations doing the rounds. One is that the Declaration was more or less extorted from the British as the price of access to war loans from Jewish-owned banks. Until 1917 some banking families which had branches in both Germany and in Britain were funding both sides in the war. And some German-Jewish bankers in New York were enthusiastically backing Germany. This has produced a ‘Protocols’ strain of anti-Semitic writing that casts the ‘evil opportunist Jew’ as a hard faced man making money out of prolonging the war. This is, of course, nonsense and Jewish backing for Germany can be easily explained by a perfectly understandable Jewish antipathy to Tsarist Russia • which had persecuted them. ”
Taking care to disavow himself of the kind of overt and repugnant anti-Semitism of the reprinted article in the Ron Paul forum, Reith nonetheless continues to essentially present the interpretation, without qualification, that the “Jews” essentially got America into World War 1 in return for Britain’s promise to support the Zionist cause. This point was not much remarked upon at the time, but because the repugnant meme has now reared its head on the Ron Paul forum it seems it ought to be pointed out the kind of slippery slope this line of interpretation rests on. That this “interpretation” is “doing the rounds” among, I imagine, the elites (at the BBC? In academia? Who else would Mr. Reith be referring to?) is truly scary.
Update on Cuban Election.
The Radio 4 8 o clock bulletin did report that the Americans had branded the election a sham.
Which it obviously is. Why weren’t the BBC able to report that as fact rather than as a comment from the country which their correspondents consistently rubbish.